Malcolm Roberts leaves NASA 'flummoxed' with Q&A climate claims

It probably takes a lot to faze Gavin Schmidt, the head of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies, but the outlandish views of Malcolm Roberts, the newly elected One Nation senator, can do it from half a world away.

Among those exasperated was fellow panelist, Brian Cox, the physicist and rock star science communicator of this generation, who told Roberts: "I could sit here and read out figures until I'm blue in the face".

Indeed, how much data do you want?

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Record global temperatures are being set at an unprecedented rate.Credit:Iwan van Hagen

Richard Muller, a former prominent sceptic US scientist, re-examined 14 million temperature observations from 44,455 sites across the world going back to 1753. The results prompted a "total turnaround" in his views, as my colleague Ben Cubby wrote in 2012.

"Our results show that the average temperature of the earth's land has risen by 2½ degrees fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of 1½ degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases," Professor Muller wrote.

Roberts, a former coal engineer, and then manager of the Galileo Movement, was unimpressed.

"We've based our views on empirical science, and there's nothing in the Muller study to undercut that," Roberts told Cubby at the time. Climate change science had been captured by "some of the major banking families in the world" who form a "tight-knit cabal", he insisted.

Former coal miner and now One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts says NASA data on climate change is 'corrupted'.Credit:Robert Shakespeare

Anyway, when Cox pulled out some charts on Q&A from US space agency NASA showing a clear upward trend in global temperatures, Roberts readily dismissed the data as "corrupted" and "manipulated".

Roberts' argument, apparently, is that the world was hotter in the 1930s but NASA had altered the figures to make the current era look warmer. (According to one take, the issue is whether the continental US was warmer in 1934 than in the hot years of 1998 or 2006 - but 2012 then blew away all previous records.)

Record heat - again

Roberts wasn't to know it but NASA's regular monthly readings on global temperature were just hours from being released.

A glance at the chart below released overnight suggests herculean efforts would be needed to make the 1930s look warmer than any recent decade, let alone the current one. Note, too, the prediction for this year.

Meanwhile, Schmidt, the climate modeller who is also the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, was clearly following the live Australian debate on Q&A.

In rapid succession, Schmidt fired out a dozen tweets, bemused by the claims of manipulation.

His world-renowned centre had been estimating global temperature changes since 1981, and the data has been available to the public since 2007, Schmidt said.

Spot the 'pause'

Since July is typically the hottest month of the year given the preponderance of land in the northern hemisphere now in summer, a record hot July also means we just posted the warmest for any month on record.

As Cook notes, the onus really should sit with Roberts to explain why so many changes predicted by climate science are being observed - such as cooling in the upper atmosphere as less heat escapes to space because of the additional greenhouse gases accumulating in the biosphere.

But Roberts and One Nation find an easier target in the messengers.

The party wants "a Royal Commission (or similar) into the corruption of climate science and identify whether any individual or organisation has misled government to effect climate and energy policy".

One Nation also demands a "review the Bureau of Meteorology to ensure independence and accountability for weather and climate records including public justification of persistent upward adjustments to historical climate records", while the CSIRO must also be investigated.

If Monday night's QandA was any guide, Roberts now will be granted a regular perch to air his nonsense, serving a useful purpose for those wanting to delay or reverse action to curb consumption of coal, oil and gas.

"It does sound outlandish," Roberts told Cubby in 2012. "I, like you, was reluctant to believe it [but] there are significant things going on in Australia that people are waking up to".

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For Australian voters, the nightmare of electing Roberts and One Nation to the senate has just begun.